Episode: #8 21/10/2006
Presenter: Sue McDougall

With the weather warming up many gardeners are turning to the area of the garden that makes them feel the coolest and the pond needs some work to get it ready for the summer entertaining season.

More home owners are installing a water feature in their garden than anything else. It is one of the easiest ways to make a difference to the garden and Waldecks in Osborne Park sell all the essential elements to have a successful pond area no matter the size.

A water feature can be enhanced with the correct plant selection. Sues idea of a great pond area is to make it look as natural as possible, with foliage hanging into the water, rocks half buried and it is essential there is some cover for frogs to hide in.

The little Stella Bella Day lily (Hemerocallis Hybrid ?Stella Bella?) is a perfect choice mass planted with its strappy foliage to about 40 cm it creates a stunning feature. It seems to flower forever and these plants are renowned world wide for their hardiness. Each flower will only last a day, but amazingly it will produce enough flowers to be in flower for at least 6 months.

You can?t kill these plants and Sue loves them because they keep on going with no care. They are truly a rewarding plant for a beginner gardener or for those set and forget areas in the garden. This week the advanced 25cm plants are on special for $11.99 each as huge saving of $13.50 each. So there is no excuse to not get stuck into the pond garden and fill in some gaps.

If you have a shady pond area and you are looking for something different then try a Tractor Seat Plant (Farfugium japonicum ?Gigantea?). It has huge long stems and a large leaf that look just like the old fashioned tractor seats.

There are so many plants to choose from when it comes to selecting something for around your pond, take a look at the Acacia Limelight (Acacia cognata ?Limelight?) which Sue also refers to as ?cousin it? and is so soft to touch. It gets to just over a metre high and is really thick and bushy.

If all this talk of pond garden inspires you but you just don?t know where to start why not visit www.waldecks.com.au and download the entry form for our $20 000 landscaping prize. Drop in the form to any of the Waldecks stores and you never know, you could have the experts creating the pond of your dreams.

In the meantime why not call into your local Waldecks store for some help as all the staff are versed in pond gardening. Jenny Smith leads the team at the Osborne Park store and would have answered every question there is on water gardening.

People seem to get it in their head that it is too hard to create a pond garden, but there are so many easy ideas that, they could have a pond built in a day. When it comes to fertilising around the water garden, Waldecks recommend Yates Dynamic Lifter, being organic it is a slow release product and if some happens to get into the water it will not harm the pond.

Waldecks have the 15kg bag on special this week for Garden Guru viewers for $17.98 which is a saving of $4.00 per bag.

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Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food

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